Two things jumped out at me in this article about the 2005 Hurricane season:

Forecasters say the Earth is at the crest of a regular cycle - that hurricane seasons go up and down in severity over a period that lasts for decades.

“We are 10 years into a cycle, but I can’t tell you it’s going to last 10 years or 30 years,” Lautenbacher said.

During this part of the cycle, the ocean surface is two to three degrees above normal. More steam rises into the air, and warm winds from Africa blow storms right at the United States.

Yep, that’s right… it’s not some vast weather conspiracy formed from the failure to ratify Kyoto. It’s just a weather cycle that has happened again and again throughout history.

What should you do? The National Hurricane Center says use the off-season to get ready. People should know where to evacuate and stock up on flashlights and bottled water.

Perhaps most important, they say, do not count on the government to bail you out.

Damn, first they take away the ability to exploit the season for purposes of supporting Kyoto, now they’re telling us not to sit around in the face of deadly storms and wait for the gubmint to come rescue us…

Moveon.org tries to exploit our brave men and women by producing a commercial about American soldiers stuck in Iraq over Thanksgiving.

Here’s the video… and the heartwarming photo of the soldiers… is a picture of British soldiers!

I also noticed an ironic moment at the end of the commercial that I’m sure Moveon.org never intended. The camera pans around the full table coming to a stop at the empty chair… seemingly to represent the relative who is not at Thanksgiving dinner because he or she is serving in the war. But the voiceover and on-screen text say: “Where are the Republicans?” Perhaps Moveon.org subconsciously realizes just who is fighting to keep them safe.

Reader Charles Scott also points out “that when the commercial mentions Democrats they show a crying woman.” Nice catch. Moveon.org was so on point with their subliminal messaging today.

The search warrant in the OU Suicide Bomber case was unsealed on November 18 and Michelle Malkin has now received the documents from the Clerk’s office. She says they don’t provide any closure on the case.

As Michelle points out, the documents confirm the reports of the presence of TATP, called “Mother of Satan”, by Islamic extremists and the same explosive as used by shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Such explosive has rarely been used in the US.

Other than that, the documents don’t seem to include any new bombshells… neither do they answer all of the questions that remain outstanding.

I must admit it is pretty humorous to see CBS lecturing on accountability and correcting the record. Yes, that CBS!

Hey Bloggers, It’s OK To Correct The Record

A good many bloggers had no problems theorizing about the intentions, motivations and connections of Joel Hinrichs in the days after he blew himself up outside of a University of Oklahoma football game. But they have been strangely silent since FBI documents relating to the incident were made public last week. The young man was clearly troubled and had a dangerous fondness for explosives, but the evidence doesnï¿½t appear to go beyond that.

It may seem anti-climactic given all the talk about a possible connection between Hinrichs and terrorism, but those who engaged in that discussion should acknowledge this. After all, isnï¿½t it just that accountability they demand of the MSM?

Sure he was clearly troubled. That wasn’t the question. But to say the evidence doesn’t go beyond that is not addressing the issue or the the questions that remain unanswered, even by these newly unsealed documents. Like:

And the FBI still says it “may never know if Hinrichs tried try to enter the stadium or purchase a ticket for the game.”

In fact, why was the FBI/Joint Terrorism Task Force even investigating the event when it was labeled at the outset a suicide of a lonely student.

If you got the answers to those questions, Vaughn, the public would love to hear them.

I don’t necessarily think this has to be a case of Hinrichs being some sort of Al-Qaeda member or just a kid committing suicide. This could be a case of an individual, acting alone, who decides to copycat run-of-the-mill terror methods. I think the bigger question surrounds his intent. Was it simply a loner suicide or was he attempting something bigger but just failed? Regardless of whether he had ties to organized terrorism or not, that question remains. The records confirm he was experimenting with some pretty unique explosives… and he certainly used a very unique method of killing himself…

Mark Tapscott has also provided excellent coverage of this story and again has a big question.

Apparently George W. Bush was quite the Governor when he was residing in my home state. First, the liberals have claimed he gave Congress faulty intelligence that led them to believe Saddam Hussein was a threat… a threat they were proclaiming years before he moved into the White House.

Lowe’s has proudly sold Christmas trees in our stores for decades, and we continue to do so this year in all of our stores nationwide. All 49 varieties of live and artificial trees at Lowe’s and on our web site, Lowes.com, are labeled as Christmas trees. The product signs inside Lowe’s stores have always said “Christmas trees,” though an outside banner did not. To ensure consistency of our message and to avoid confusion among our customers, we are now referring to the trees only as “Christmas Trees.” We have also removed the banner that read “holiday trees” from the front of our stores.Lowe’s apologizes for any confusion the banner created. We appreciate our customers bringing the matter to our attention and giving us the opportunity to correct the error. For many retailers, including Lowe’s, the holiday season encompasses all the holidays between October and early January. Thus we adopted an overall “Home for the Holidays” theme five years ago. In addition to spanning the season, we believe this theme is respectful of all our customers, regardless of which holidays they may celebrate.

Feel free to use the same contact page to offer your support of their response.

Update: Looks like a similar story has been playing out on Capitol Hill. The best quote from that story: “Mr. Staver of the Liberty Counsel went on to say that to rename a Christmas Tree a Holiday tree was just as offensive as renaming a Jewish menorah a candlestick.”

It wasn’t so much a big shocker that the Lions’ head coach Steve Mariucci was getting the axe. But the way I found out was a little more interesting than the news itself. Sitting next to me on the flight to Detroit today was Roy Williams — former Texas Longhorn and current wide receiver for the Detroit Lions.

Apparently he called his mom when we landed and then tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, my coach got fired.”

“Elder makes the compelling case that guns save lives. He doesn’t just do it with statistics that no one can deny. He does it with real stories of survivors. He does it with interviews from experts. He does it with the confused thinking of people like Moore, who is, ultimately, ambushed for an interview by Elder.” - Joseph Farah

Michelle made reference to Soros money finding its way to the “Main Street” Republicans via a donation Soros made to the 527 group, the Main Street Individual Fund (”MSIF”).

The lawyer claims MSIF is “NOT the same as the [Republican Main Street Partnership] (”RMSP”), nor is it affiliated with or controlled by RMSP. To state otherwise is false, misleading to the public, and damaging to RMSP’s reputation.”

But basic internet research shows otherwise. As Michelle points out, the website opensecrets.org has a bio on MSIF that says:

The Main Street Individual Fund (MSIF) is a New York-based group founded to help elect moderate Republican candidates. Among those candidates it supports in the 2004 elections is Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa), who is fending off a tough primary challenge from Rep. Pat Toomey. MSIF raises funds from individual donors and is affiliated with another 527, the Main Street Fund, which solicits contributions from corporations and unions. Both are connected to the Republican Main Street Partnership.

To comply with the law, the [Republican Main Street Partnership] abolished its original 527 controlled by members of Congress and dumped about $178,000 of remaining funds in late 2002 into new independent soft money entities.

They are the Main Street Fund, which solicits groups, unions and businesses for donations, and the Main Street Individual Fund, which raises money from wealthy individuals aimed at helping specific candidates.

So it makes one wonder why RMSP has the pit bulls firing off threatening letters claiming there’s no affiliation. I agree with the pit bull’s assertion that being linked to Soros is a reputation-killer… but that’s hardly something to blame on Malkin who simply pointed out the public information.

Let’s get real on this story. RMSP and its affiliated groups support liberals masquerading as Republicans. In fact, the membership list reads like a who’s-who of Congressional RINOs. Olympia Snowe, Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Specter, John McCain, etc. So taking money from the mother of all liberals wouldn’t really be a stretch of the imagination. And really, how does taking money from Soros do any more to harm their reputation than their liberal politics already do?

Just look at the campaign contributions of the members of Caplin & Drysdale, the firm that is threatening Malkin on behalf of “moderate Republicans”. With the exception of several token contributions, the vast majority of campaign contributions is to liberal politicians and groups (Hillary Clinton, , Dick Gephardt, HILLPAC, John Kerry, Howard Dean, DNC Services Corp, Tom Daschle, Nick Lampson, EMILY’s List, Evan Bayh, Russ Feingold, DSCC, Paul Wellstone and more).

One other interesting incident in this whole story is that CRP, who runs the website opensecrets.org, apparently erased the Soros donation from its records sometime after Malkin posted about it (of course, CRP, itself appears to be a recipient of Soros money as well). But unfortunately for them, the donation still exists in otherdatabases.

Sarah Chamberlain Resnick changed the name of her two Section 527 organizations to Republicans Who Care (formerly Main Street Fund) and Republicans Who Care Individual Fund (formerly Main Street Individual Fund).

So within a week of Malkin’s post about the Soros donation to MSIF, both groups that are apparently “connected” to RMSP — MSIF and MSF — changed their names… and on or about the same date, they sick their pit bulls on those asking questions about the Soros money. Interesting.

I thought about this just the other day when the media was glorifying Rep. Murtha for his troop withdrawal comments and then suddenly the same media was running stories on the Administration’s troop withdrawal plans - as if the one caused the other. Donald has a good post about this, including a good description of my own thoughts:

Folks, you are dreaming if you think this plan was a midnight-oil project since Murtha or his fellow attacks dogs began biting. … Its no coincidence that the Democrats have raised their voices so loudly just before the Pentagon was ready to announce these withdrawals. … So, knowing that the plan was to redeploy troops beginning next year, the Democrats decided to get in front of the wave: Demand the troops be sent home NOW and then when the Pentagon announces the plan to redeploy, take credit for it.

Back on October 1st, I wrote about the ridiculousness of feigned outrage over Bill Bennett for his response to a caller discussing the book Freakonomics. Liberals had taken his comments out of context so they could paint him as a rabid racist who would endorse genocide of blacks to prevent social ills. Obviously that smear of Bennett was as vile and ridiculous as the underlying claim itself.

But now economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston are taking aim at the statistics behind one of the book’s most controversial chapters: The assertion that there is a link between the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s and the drop in crime rates in the 1990s. The very same issue Bennett was addressing when he gave what he called, a “a noxious hypothetical analogy”, to prove the absurdity of the book’s claim. Then he called the suggestion that ‘abortion to reduce the crime rate’ an “impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do”.

Christopher Foote, a senior economist at the Boston Fed, and Christopher Goetz, a research assistant, say the research behind the book’s conclusion is faulty as well. The researchers say, “There are no statistical grounds for believing that the hypothetical youths who were aborted as fetuses would have been more likely to commit crimes had they reached maturity than the actual youths who developed from fetuses and carried to term.” The very same point Bennett was trying to make.

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